


Let the sky fall (look, there's something better beyond it)

by indelibleangel (InfallibleAngel)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (Only a bit tho), Attempt at Humor, F/M, Gen, Yearning, after that only elias is having a grand old time, and maybe melanie and georgie, basically some people are happy until the end of this fic, everyone's having a miserable time except elias bouchard, he's looking at some cool cows, it's apocalypse time baybee, oh and martin's also happy until the end of this fic, spoilers also for season 3, spoilers for 160, they're not mentioned but they're also happy, this is basically elias/gertrude pillow talk, until the end of this fic at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 03:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21487846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfallibleAngel/pseuds/indelibleangel
Summary: A conversation between Elias Bouchard and Gertrude Robinson at the end of the world.
Relationships: Implied Elias Bouchard/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Let the sky fall (look, there's something better beyond it)

**Author's Note:**

> gertrude and elias were coworkers with benefits and no one can tell me otherwise

The world begins ending and no one but him notices. There is a sort of poetry in that, he supposes, people have said that the end would arrive when no one was prepared for it for centuries, and despite that, they still don’t expect it. 

No one expects the world to end on a Thursday. It makes sense if you think about it but it doesn’t  _ feel  _ like the end of the world should come about on a Thursday. It’s too unassuming, a day no one makes a fuss over. You would expect there to be more pomp about it, but The Watcher isn’t one for large declarations or festivities. It’s not like the hunger of The Desolation, but it is a hunger nevertheless, a greed that does not full emulsify. Someone many years ago ( _ How many? Who was it? What was the context? _ ) told him  _ we eat with our eyes _ and it has stuck ever since. 

‘Gertrude,’ he says because she is here. She has always been here. He could  _ know _ if she was really here or not, but he isn’t sentimental. 

‘Elias, it looks like your plans have finally come to fruition.’ 

‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’ There is truth in this, and he can’t seem to rid himself of the idle curiosity to lash out at her and see what she will do. Test her skin with a hot poker and see if she will burn. She never reacts, but he always hopes ( _ Hope? Despite his best efforts he’s still got that human tendency _ ) that she will. She barely reacted when she was shot. 

‘Yes, your gratitude was really implicit when you shot me.’ 

Time has not granted him the ability to talk about this as yet so he doesn’t. He tells himself she is dead, and it doesn’t matter. His deity does not demand that he faces his own depths, content enough to glut itself on second-hand secrets since his depths hold no fear. He merely avoids it because it isn’t polite to talk about murder with the person you murdered. 

‘Jon really is an excellent archivist, he’s ushering in the new world.’ That makes him happier than he’s been in years, a joy that is nearly reverent and even Gertrude’s quiet _hmm_ isn’t enough to dull that. 

‘You mistake me for someone who cares, Elias. I was neither interested in your approval nor in being a good archivist. If I was, your archivist wouldn’t have complained about my filing system so much.’ He already knows this, but it doesn’t take the sting away. Even after everything, Gertrude Robinson doesn’t  _ care _ , her cold steel soul so polished if you tried to eat her fear it would leave you ravenous; siphoning your power out. 

‘Why did you do it then?’ he asks and ever since her death this question is so common it may as well be a game they play.  _ Why did you do it, Gertrude? What was it all for? _ But death does not cure her of her penchant for leaving him wanting. She is remarkably selfish but current circumstances considered he isn’t much better. It’s why they had a good working relationship.

She merely raises an eyebrow, and he sighs. He wouldn’t be able to look into her mind even if he could; another thing time hasn’t given him: the courage to  _ see _ Gertrude Robinson. 

‘What do you think of him?’ he asks instead, and her lips twist and shift to one side in a way that he recognises. It means she is seriously considering his question; it means he wants to kiss her. 

‘He’s a little too emotional,’ she says after a bit. ‘He takes everything so personally.’ Her expression is pity mixed with one part disappointment and another part impatience, but too many people have spent aeons trying to decrypt the nuances in Gertrude’s expressions.

‘If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be such a perfect archive’

‘It’s a shame. He seemed so promising at the start, but then the paranoia got to him.’

Elias—he’s gotten used to thinking of himself as Elias now— turns to look at her, his eyes shining. ‘Have you been watching him?’ 

She sighs a deep sigh, right from her bones and her age never shows but he can feel it now and it doesn’t quell the pure delight he feels. Gertrude Robinson, affiliated with The Ceaseless Watcher, haunting the place she used to live and watching everyone who passes by. Or if she is a figment of his imagination, then his version of Gertrude is a lot more devoted to their God than she was in life. He is surrounded by ghosts, being a ghost person himself; something between dead and alive. He has been dead for so many years, and he has died so many times, but despite it all, he continues to live in sheer defiance of mortality. 

‘I’m dead, Elias, there isn’t much for me to do.’

They don’t mention that brief moment when her skin was taken. It still, not enrages, but annoys him to think about it, that was one of the reasons he let Jon go into the Unknowing despite it being not strictly necessary for him to become The Archive. It all worked out perfectly in the end with The End, but he still doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s not humanity—God knows he lost that decades ago—or decency, which he never really had that makes that topic off-limits. It simply isn’t  _ polite _ . 

Jon has nearly reached the end of his monologue and he frowns. ‘You’ve distracted me from listening,’ he accuses her, ‘I spent weeks crafting that you know?’

‘I know,’ she grins, and it’s all  _ her _ , that Cheshire Cat grin that is positively devious. A lot of statements forget this: they say that she was impatient and determined and struck fear into the hearts of the entities. Not enough statements mention she took joy in what she did. ‘I saw you practising it to yourself.’ 

‘I wasn't practising it to myself. We’re never alone, Gertrude, you know this. Can’t you feel the eyes upon us even now? Stealing this away in hungry gulps?’

‘I’m dead,’ she reminds him. ‘They only watch you.’

Then Jon reaches the end, and he has to say the words with him. ‘ **You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right. Come to us in your wholeness. Come to us in your perfection. Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and leads and dies! Come to us. I OPEN THE DOOR!** ’

He opens his eyes, and she is gone along with the world. He is, well there isn’t a word for what he is now. Adelard may have suggested “the Antichrist” because he heralded in the new world, but he is not. He is finally himself: Jonah Magnus, the architect of The Magnus Archives. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! pls come scream at me about your gertrude thots down below, i love one (1) scary old woman.


End file.
